….. Picking up from where I left the last post. The Paradox! What is paradox? Webster dictionary explains it in many ways, but the simplest way it can be put is: a situation in which two aspects of [same] human behavior often contradicts each other. Isn’t our life full of paradox? Just pause and think how many aspect of our life is free from it. Believe you me, you won’t find many. Let’s start with basics. We all want our children to get up early in the morning but if we recall our youthful days, let alone kid days, we always loathed getting up early and given a chance even now feel like being in bed for longer - on a holiday. There are many ways of looking at such paradox. To harsh critic: it is hypocrisy. To psychologist: it may be precursor to bipolar disorder! To layman: it is just the mundane way of living. To a layman, craving for comfort is nothing abnormal and to crave for all round protection & advancement of our children is equally normal, hence longing to sleep longer and wanting our children to get up early is perfectly fine, there is nothing paradoxical about it! But this is what called paradox. Let’s turn to history: be that social, political, economic, religious or even scientific … and we find that all such aspects of our life, all through the history, has been full of paradox. Let’s take paradox of social life, first. It’s a known fact that until just before European Renaissance slavery was the given fact of social life of all civilisations – with varying degree of safeguards accorded to slave in various civlisations. With the renaissance gaining ground and overpowering church (power), the discourse abhorring slavery, though limited to European slave only, forced the power, that be, to ban slavery. And, over the period of time, with Anglo-European soft power clouding most of the known territory of the earth, the term slavery became a matter of shame. And with the advent of mass print technology, the communication of news from one corner of the world to the other getting available at affordable price, the practice of slavery was forced by the soft power to be forsaken by even Islamic society. But, how many of you believe that slavery is non-existent today? Give the idea a thought, and you will be convinced that slavery is very much part of [even] our modern society; may be in a different form. In fact such churning will take you to another level of paradox that can be safely said to be oxymoronic paradox! Why oxymoronic Paradox? Because what we are going to talk about is voluntary slavery. Isn’t it oxymoronic that somebody can be a slave to a situation out of his own volition? Yes, it is. But howsoever oxymoronic it may appear it does happen. Take for example: a journalist, who always vow in the name of upholding the ethos of his profession and thus never compromises with the truth, comes across an investigative story involving extrajudicial, rather whimsical, killing of many innocent (seemingly) people of militancy affected area by the armed forces personnel of his own country. The wanton killing may be retribution to the killing of their own comrade (Armed Forces Personnel) in patrol party ambush but making such story public in its crude form may be detrimental to the interest and morale of the Armed Forces and problem is further compounded by the fact that the killing of innocent (seemingly) was not completely unprovoked considering the ambush on patrol party resulting in death of few of the armed forces personnel. He reminds himself of the tremendously positive work done by the same Armed Forces, in the past. He can’t escape the thought either that so long as idea of state, let alone nation state, is living reality of humanity there will be Armed Forces. Hence, any possible damage to its credibility will have long bearing on the institution, per se. Now the journalist is in catch 22, .……on the one hand his journalistic training is compelling him to make the story public, on the other his social duty to national interests compelling him to hold the story unreported. He may be daring enough not to be enslaved by his proprietor or to the threat of attendant risk to his family if he does such reporting but certainly he is enslaved to the sentiment that is in no way linked to any personal gain or loss to his life. This is just hypothetical! Let’s turn to something real that is happening day in and day out in our society. Recently, our finance minister, in response to the persistent questioning by the oppositions on issue of recovering black money, said that emotional adventurism on the issue would prove to be more detrimental to the interest of our economy than beneficial. By saying so he was alluding to the fact that the list of black money hoarder is long and it may contain name of the bigwig of our business class but making their name public may vitiate the climate of economic activity in our country. He, definitely, has substance in his view. Should it be believed that he doesn’t want to make the name of black money hoarder public? He may or may not be, but despite the fact he is aware of the wrath of his supporters/voters in mind, he is saying so. Why? Because, he is enslaved to the larger interest, i.e. the economic activity operation running. Inference: even Finance minister is not free to act in a way he would have liked to. In other word he too is slave to certain interest, not necessarily associated with his personal gain/loss. Let’s take another and even more ruthless example. Supreme court, the highest body to protect our freedom, while hearing a case involving CBI director’s omission/commission in coal gate/2G scam, made scathing attack on the director himself but restrained itself from making all activities of the investigation agency public, with the obiter dicta that if all that is known to the supreme court is discussed threadbare {in public} it would erode the credibility of the CBI. Just imagine even the highest body of the protectors of our freedom is not free {absolutely}! And please don’t confuse aforesaid arguments with obligation. Obligation is something that one must do because of a law, rule, promise, etc. or it is morally good. In all above situations the man in question is not at all legally bound to the stand that one ordinarily takes {.. in such situations). And so far as moral argument is concerned, the higher degree of morality calls that the journalist should make the report public, the finance minister should make the name public and Supreme Court judge should have made the CBI’s muck public. Now it is for you all to visualize as to how often we rise above slavery. In fact, as there is nothing like absolute freedom, there will always be slavery, in society, in whatever forms and howsoever benign. As the write up on just social paradox got so long to cover a page, I am holding my thought on other form of paradox back for the other day/post. Thanks.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 09:48:56 +0000
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